Matchy tatchy

Last Saturday, my sibs (absent our West Coast bro) and I had a post-jab reunion at my place - the first time we've all been together since my brother's (Boston bro's) retirement party, which was held a few days before Massachusetts's March 2020 pandemic shutdown. 

For Saturday's occasion, I had a medium-dark blue tablecloth on my dining room table. I was wearing a medium purplish-blue top.

Although the medium dark-blue of the tablecloth and the medium purplish blue of my top were nowhere near the same color - other than being in the blue family and not clashing - I was painfully and wrongfully accused by my sister's of deliberately going full-tilt cra hostess and coordinating my outfit with my table. I guess it didn't help that my plates are white-with-navy-trim bistro plates. Or that the napkins were blue, too. 

But the thing is - as my sisters well know - I wear blue. A lot. Even my glasses are blue. And I have a lot of blue in my home. A lot of blue. Including the chair that my sister Kath was sitting on when she and Trish made their accusation.

As they well know, I am absolutely not - never have been, never will be - a table dresser. 

But table dressing is, it seems, a thing. 

Hostesses with the mostestess are wearing dresses the go with their placements, table cloths, napkins, plates. Some are going fuller tilt, with vases, pitchers, and even wallpaper. 

There are now, it seems:

...a raft of fashion brands offering suites of homeware, and particularly tableware, that are not only analogous to their ready-to-wear options but in many cases feature the same prints and colors. This trend—we’ll call it “table dressing”—has been percolating for several years, with e-commerce hubs such as MatchesFashion and Moda Operandi investing increasingly in homewares that parallel their fashion offerings. (Source: Wall Street Journal)

Not surprisingly, Instagram has encouraged this ultra-coordination trend, and now there are folks out there who have gotten into fully curating - such a great word (not!) - their tables. 

As rising temperatures and vaccination numbers make the prospect of hosting small gatherings a reality, table dressing’s IRL appeal continues to grow. The scope for synchronization is expanding, too. You can pair Edie Parker’s vermilion acrylic coasters with the brand’s Cherry Bomb earrings; set the table with La DoubleJ’s pineapple-motif plates while wearing the line’s parallel-print crepe de chine swing dress; or coordinate Off-White’s arrow-logo-emblazoned bomber with its logo-patterned table runner.

Not everyone curating and Instagramming is going full matchmaking. Some are striving for "more nuanced dialogue."

Now that I think about it, my mother may have been ahead of her time. When she hosted holiday dinners, she got out her cream-colored tablecloth and napkins embroidered (by her very own hand) with pink roses with green stems. Her "good" china, used for holidays, had a sweet pattern of pink roses, and her silver had roses on the handles. She didn't dress to match. She didn't wear pink clothing. Her dress would have been dark, and coupled with a "fancy" apron - a way "more nuanced dialogue" than making sure everything perfectly matched. 

While ahead of her time in terms of everyday hostess consumer-ing, she was in good, high-falutin company. 

Around the turn of the 20th century, Frank Lloyd Wright designed modernist dresses for clients to complement their new homes, and Gloria Vanderbilt’s patchwork housecoat deliberately accentuated her famous quilt-patterned bedroom.

There's no end to what you can match up: coordinate your napkin rings and the bow for your hair; match your hydrangeas with your shoes; match your earrings to your finger bowls. (For the record, on Saturday, I was wearing silver earrings. If I'd really been in to table dressing, I'd have worn blue. So there.)

Nell Diamond is a big proponent of table dressing (and, yes, Sweet Caroline, I first read that as Neil Diamond):

...she suggests pairing Hill House Home’s newly released bubble-gum-stripe dress with botanical table linens in deep pinks and reds. “[Coordinating] your outfit with the tablescape allows you to curate the whole mood and transport yourself,” she said. “It allows people to daydream a bit more.”

Mood!

Anyway, my mother - so fashion forward with her curated table dressing - had a term for  over-the-top matchery: matchy-tatchy. While things, she felt, should "go" with each other, too much made it matchy-tatchy, and that was to be avoided at all cost. 

Anyone dressing to match their wallpaper to match their salt-and-pepper shakers has got way too much time on their hands. And it doesn't seem to me that anyone who'd do this doesn't have a lot of trust in their own taste and judgement. They are matchy-tatchy-ers. Blech!

As for me, next time I have anyone over for dinner I'll make sure NOT to wear that purplish-blue top. But the tablecloth? Hell, it's the only one I have: it stays.